Best way to do a quick 800 photo slide show...

Note 500 to 1000 photos is a lot of slides for one presentation. 500 slides at 3 seconds each is 25 minutes. You are limited to 120 minutes on a DVD but you have to leave time for menus and transitions also so, the slide show will need to be 100 to 110 minutes long.

To play on a commerical DVD player, using iDVD you are likely limited to 99 slides using iDVD to create the slide show. Exceeding 99 slides can be problematic with some DVD players which either won't go beyond 99 slides or may have a "stall" or glitch in the audio/video when the 99th slide is reached.

Using iMovie would produce the best quality and flexibility (multiple transitions and music etc) but is time consuming as you will have to import pictures and work on the transitions individually. Global changes to transitions and timing cannot be made.

iPhoto might be your best bet but has less flexibility, but you can make global changes to transitions and timing (but all transitions and slide times will be the same). Create a photo album of your photos and arrange them in the order you want (you can skip this step if you want but I have found it easier to rearrange the photos) and then create a slide show choosing your transition and slide times and music. Now share your slide show directly to iDVD or share to a full quality quicktime file for better quality, in this case you will have to insert the file in to iDVD yourself. Note, if you have 1000 photos, this step will take the computer some time to complete.

Use iDVD to create your disk. Strongly suggest for maximum compatibility with DVD players that you save it as a disk image and then burn the image to DVD using Disk Utility (included on your system) at 2x or lower. Use a good brand DVD-R (not -RW or +R) such as Verbatim or Maxcell.

Hope this helps.

Message was edited by: kasa

Message was edited by: kasa

I am ready for a similar project - exactly how to import from iPhoto to iDVD??
Need exact steps, not real tech savvy! You mentioned Quick time for better quality?? What are the steps (exactly!) for that?
THANKS so much!!!! Could do nothing without these forums!!!!

On the menu bar select

Share>quicktime choose full quality

You will have to insert this file into iDVD yourself.

you can also do

Share>iDVD

and it will automatically open iDVD and insert it for you (but the quality will not be as good as the full quality option).

checking to be sure -
so after creating slide show in iPhoto,
use Menu to go to File, then Export...
then choose QuickTime - what about choice of movie size, leave at "large"??
Thanks for your help!!!

Right. Create your slideshow in iPhoto and export it as a quicktime movie to your desktop using the "Large" setting. Then drag that quicktime movie into your iDVD project as a movie, not a slideshow. (In iDVD, go to the Project menu and click on Add Movie, and then drag your movie into the "Add Movie" button that appears in the iDVD menu window.) If your movie is longer than 1 hour, burn it at Best Quality, if under an hour, use Best Performance.

Incidentally, at the bottom of the iPhoto slideshow window there is a box called "Adjust" that will let you adjust the display time for individual slides, as well as vary the transition speed. There's also a box that lets you add/adjust the Ken Burns effect to a limited extent.

As mentioned by Kasa, there are other ways to make slideshows, but with as many photos as you have, I think that this would be the easiest way amongst the ways listed by Kasa. If you used iMovie to create your slideshow, you would have more options, such as titles and varying transitions and effects, but then its more work. Tradeoffs, always tradeoffs. 🙂

"Share>quicktime choose full quality"

Do you mean File/Export (which is the way I do it)? I don't have the "share>quicktime choose full quality" option.

Hmmm, I don't have the "Share-Quicktime" choice on my menu either, just iDVD which you state is NOT best quality - should we Export???

My bad, I am thinking of iMovie, since as I'm not in front of my mac right now. I believe it is under export in iPhoto.

Thanks Rich! I assume the music will just "come over" with the slide show!
Assuming I haven't used iTunes, ugh, that's so annoying!

Make sure you are not using purchased music from iTunes as your music. It's a known problem.